Final Project for the course "Expressive Watercolor Painting" by Reha Sakar

I have been considering painting landscapes for some time now. Reha Sakar's paintings fascinate me because they have so much depth and texture, are wild and somehow rough - not “classic” watercolor landscape paintings, Reha plays and works with the colors to create atmospheric images that seem almost dreamlike to me. Trying out this style sparked my curiosity and I was not disappointed in the course. And wow, it was quite challenging! The final project consisted of a radiant reference picture, which involved quite a few challenges... creating even transitions of tone and color at the same time, keeping the mid tones in the right tonal value, drawing straight lines while keeping the brush stroke unforced, creating hard and soft edges, using dry brussstrokes and adding wires to the poles with loose but at the same time precisely placed brushstrokes... every step of the process challenged me and this last step almost caused me to despair. But I'm quite happy with the result, even if I think I still have a lot of potential in it, especially to become freer and looser in the brushstrokes (which still needs a lot of practice to become more confident in the basics) and embrace the "chaos" even more.

Many thanks to Reha Sakar for this comprehensive insight into his fantastic technique, approach to his paintings and all the valuable tips along the way.

As I didn't have the same colors available as the ones Reha used in the final project, I had to look for alternatives in my palettes. I used the following colors:
- Naples Yellow (Daniel Smith)
- Quinacridone Gold (Daniel Smith)
- Quinacridone Burnt Orange (Daniel Smith)
- Burnt Sienna (Winsor Newton)
- Burnt Umber (Daniel Smith)
- Permanent Alizarin Crimson (Daniel Smith)
- Winsor Violett (Winsor Newton)
- Cobalt Blue (Winsor Newton)
- Paynes Grey (Winsor Newton)

The paper is Winsor Newton professional 300g cold-pressed and I used various synthetic round and flat brushes.
A paper with a rough surface, like the one Reha uses, would probably be even better suited to this style, but I didn't have any 100% rough cotton paper at home.

I somehow had the urge to add a drop of color. I also realized that I should use 100% cotton watercolor paper for the final project, as it didn't work out so well with the cheaper paper quality in the sketchbook. I created the tonal value sketch while going through the entire lesson from Reha. This helped when creating the final project as I already knew what the steps would be and I could focus on specific details during the second review.

I wish I would've added a little more red to the upper part of the sky, but as the wash turned out otherwise quite even, I left it as it is.

Second challenge: creating mid-tones and rays of sunlight. The second wash should consist of cool tones on the left and warm tones for the heat of the sunlight on the right. Some splashes of water were also added for texture. I didn't manage to integrate the dark values into this layer like Reha did, as the paint dried too quickly. I was also still quite stiff at this stage and used too little water. So I took a break, loosened up a bit and then added a third wash to create more dark tones with looser brushstrokes, more water and more pigment.

This last steps took me a lot of courage, especially to add the wires at the (almost) final stage of the painting... I spent 15min practicing lines on a scrap paper :)